Babbel · B2C · language learning app
Chart revenue from new, upgrading, renewing and returning subscribers, then explain each spike
Surfaces which past decisions moved revenue, e.g. a lifetime plan launch; no numbers
Unknownanalytics-attributionexperimentation
What they did
When starting in a revenue role (Babbel, then Yousician), split subscription revenue into four buckets: new subscribers, upgrades between plans, renewals, and win-backs (churned users who return). Track how each bucket evolves over the years in Excel, find the big jumps or drops (e.g. new-subscriber revenue jumping from a given month), then ask what happened and map it to the decision (e.g. launching a lifetime subscription). Link or embed the documentation of each decision in the same spreadsheet and turn it into a short presentation to share. Prefer this over reading every entry of a long experiment log, since many experiments don't matter.
What happened
Reveals which decisions actually moved the business and prevents re-learning past lessons; no quantified result.
In their words
Sub Club by RevenueCat · Stop Celebrating Conversion Wins Before Checking Renewals – Sara Grana, Yousician“You can either get money from people that never had the subscription and start a new subscription, people that upgraded from a subscription to another, people that renew a subscription or people that used to have subscription then churned and then came back. So these four buckets, you have these four buckets.”
“I would track in Excel how we're moving, and then from that, maybe have a little presentation for me or then to share and then you map, okay, "Here, this line, this happened because of this thing."”
Related topics
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More from this episode
- Yousician: Set calendar reminders to recheck price tests at 3 and 6 monthsCatches price 'wins' that flip once renewals come in; no numbers
- Yousician: Before calling a paywall test, wait two weeks and check refunds and chargebacksRefunds show up fast and can erase a paywall win; no numbers
- Send an offer to people who turn off auto-renewLooked great, but users refunded first and then took the offer; net negative
- Judge a new lifetime plan against what a subscriber pays over timeTests otherwise wrongly crown lifetime, e.g. 250 vs 100 instead of 250 vs 300 euros
- Split renewal rates by plan, discount, and web vs app before reading themWeb buyers renew much better, so blended renewals rise from mix shift alone
- Yousician: Use monthly-plan renewals to set a warning threshold for yearly-plan test winners